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Killadelphia: Another three bite the dust!

We’ve known for a while now that District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia) does not like charging juveniles with adult crimes. Really, he doesn’t like charging adults with adult crimes. Nevertheless, he hasn’t completely ruled out charging the worst of Philly’s teens as adults:

The changes do not apply to juveniles who are repeat offenders or who are charged with serious crimes including gun possession, aggravated assault resulting in serious injury, sexual assault, and other felonies involving weapons.

Now comes a big test of Mr Krasner’s resolve:

2 teens arrested in quadruple shooting that killed 3 teens in Philly

“Just a travesty,” said Veronica J. Joyner, founder and chief administrative officer of Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School of Philadelphia Inc., attended by two of the shooting victims.

by Diane Mastrull | Saturday, April 29, 2023 | 3:35 PM EDT

Two teenagers have been arrested in connection with a quadruple shooting that left three teens dead and one hospitalized Friday afternoon in Philadelphia’s Crescentville section, police said.

Police identified the dead Saturday as Malik Ballard, 17, of the city’s Frankford section; Khalif Frezghi, 18, of East Mount Airy; and Salah Fleming, 14, of North Philadelphia.

The shooting occurred about 3:30 p.m. Friday on the 5900 block of Palmetto Street, where, police said, Ballard was found shot on the sidewalk, Frezghi on a front porch, and Fleming just inside the front doorway of a home. All were pronounced dead at the scene by medics.

A fourth victim, a 16-year-old male who has not been identified, arrived at Jefferson Frankford Hospital with a gunshot wound to the stomach, police said.

Following that are several paragraphs telling us what good guys the victims were, we get this:

A short time after the shootings, police said Friday night, they found a black Ford Edge believed to have been involved in the shootings. It had crashed on the 500 block of East Wyoming Street. Police took two juveniles into custody and said they believed they had dropped off the injured 16-year-old at the hospital.

Police identified them only as 15- and 16-year-old males and said they have been charged with violation of the Uniform Firearms Act and related offenses.

Huh? If reporter Diane Mastrull’s story is accurate, we are expected to believe that the alleged killers then rescued one of their intended victims, and took him to the hospital. Does this make sense to anyone? My first impression is that the surviving victim was actually shot by one of the three dead boys, possibly in a gun battle, and the killers scooped the victims’ weapons before fleeing. Other scenarios could be constructed, such as the killers accidentally wounded one of their own.

There is, of course, the possibility that the police got the situation wrong.

A 15-year-old can be charged as an adult in the Keystone State for certain violent crimes

5900 block of Palmetto Street, image from Google Maps. Click to enlarge.

The 5900 block of Palmetto Street is a rowhouse neighborhood, not the worst in Philly, built around 1925, and looking as though there was a mid-1980s remodeling project oing on down the entire, short street. 5915 Palmetto Street, a 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom, 1,064 ft² rowhouse which looks like a recent flip, is currently for sale for $225,000, following a $20,000 price reduction on April 24th, which suggests that it’s been on the market for awhile with little interest, while 5946 Palmetto Street, same statistics, and also looking like a flip, is listed for $185,000.

Amusingly enough, all of the homes zillow.com lists for sale in the neighborhood show as having natural gas heat via hot water or steam radiators, so if Helen Gym Flaherty wins the Democratic nomination for Mayor, she’ll want all the residents in that poor, though not totally devastated, neighborhood to convert to electric heat pumps! 🙂

This is the last day of April, and the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page tells us that, through April 29th, there were 124, 169, and 154 murders on that date in 2020, 2021, and 2022, respectively. Those years finished with 499, 562, and 516 homicides, though that 499 number for 2020 is suspect, at least. Currently, with at least 137 homicides as of Friday, April 28th, the City of Brotherly Love is doing better than 2021 and 2022, but is ahead of the 2020 homicide rate.

The important date is May 25th, the date in 2020 in which the methamphetamine-and-fentanyl-addled previously convicted felon George Floyd died while resisting arrest in Minneapolis. That led to a whole summer of riots civil unrest in the #BlackLivesMatter protests. If the current year is ahead of 2020’s pace, the real numbers will tell us something if the pace stays ahead of 2020 post May 25th.

The homicide rate in Philly has been very much up-and-down in recent years, and I’m hesitant to start making projections based on current statistics. With the daily rate being higher than 2020, I could say that the city is on a path to more than 500 again, but being significantly below 2022, perhaps not. But one thing seems certain: teenagers in Philly are continuing to carry firearms, illegally, and show little restraint in using them.

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It was never about tolerance; it was always about forced acceptance

We first mentioned Dylan Mulvaney a month ago, when, as Robert Stacy McCain put it, “satire is rapidly becoming impossible because reality has gotten so weird.” Since then, two well-paid executives accepting his ‘reality’ have managed to get themselves fired “leaves of absence“.

Mr Mulvaney managed to keep his mouth shut for a while, as someone told him he realized that opening it would not help his cause.

Well, he’s talking again, but it isn’t helping his case. According to Mr Mulvaney, I should be in jail!

What did he say?

The articles written about me using ‘he’ pronouns and calling me a man over and over again, and I feel like that should be illegal, I, I don’t know, that’s just bad journalism.

He may rest assured, while I always referred to him as male and use the masculine pronouns, I have never called him a man. Nevertheless, Mr Mulvaney believes that “should be illegal.” I’m not certain under what existing laws he believes that it “should be illegal,” or whether he believes that a new law should be passed to make it so, but I’m pretty solidly in favor of this one:

The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.

You’ve heard of the First Amendment, right? That pesky part of the Constitution of the United States which states:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What Mr Mulvaney doesn’t seem to understand is that the First Amendment protects his right to claim that he’s actually a girl, or to say that he believes it should be illegal for [insert plural slang term for the anus here] like me to refer to him in ways which do not accept his claim that he’s really a woman. I absolutely support his right to say what he wishes, but I also have the right to say that I believe anyone who accepts what he has said as somehow truthful is dumb as a box of rocks.

Naturally, the vast majority of the professional media have been using Mr Mulvaney’s preferred terms, and, as we have previously reported, The Philadelphia Inquirer decided to double down with a fluff piece on Will Thomas, the male former University of Pennsylvania swimmer who decided that he was really a woman, and was calling himself “Lia.” The credentialed media have been quite diligent in their attempts to ‘normalize’ the cockamamie idea that girls can be boys and boys can be girls.

That wasn’t all Mr Mulvaney had to say. This is from the HuffPost, so naturally it’s all favorable to him!

Dylan Mulvaney Breaks Silence In Wake Of Bud Light Partnership Backlash

Story by Ben Blanchet • Friday, April 28, 2023

Dylan Mulvaney said she (sic) has struggled to understand “the need to dehumanize and be cruel” following right-wing outrage over her partnership with Bud Light earlier this month. . . . .

Mulvaney, in her (sic) first TikTok in roughly three weeks, said some of what’s “been said” about her (sic) has been far from the truth and revealed that she’s been “having crazy deja vu” after facing criticism.

“I’m an adult, I’m 26 and throughout childhood I was called too feminine and over-the-top and here I am now being called all those same things but this time it’s from other adults,” said Mulvaney, who later quipped that she (sic) should be accused of being a theater person who is camp.

Well, that last is true enough: he is a “theater person who is ‘camp’.” His schtick is over-the-top campiness, and a total parody of how real girls act, yet he doesn’t seem to see how the whole thing makes him wholly unbelievable, and actually hurts people who are ‘transgender’ and are simply trying to fit in to society as they see themselves. Making a spectacle of yourself hardly seems to be trying to fit in.

If that’s all it was, no one would really care. But the left are pushing laws which require other people to go along with a ‘transgendered’ person’s faux name and requested pronouns and honorifics, some of which have passed, subjecting employers to hostile workplace violations if an employee refuses to lie about another employee’s sex, and can even fine businesses if an employee ‘misgenders’ or ‘deadnames’ a customer.

Translation: at least in New York City, the truth will set you free . . . from your job.

As Erick Erickson put it, “You will be made to care.”

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The Philadelphia Police Department: does sloppiness in the little things lead to sloppiness in the bigger issues?

We reported on Wednesday about the terrible job that Philadelphia’s Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw has done, not on the crime numbers, though those are certainly important, but on managing and leading the Department.

But while leaders are normally called into account for the big things, it’s the little things that frequently don’t get noticed, but are indicative of a general attitude of sloppiness in an organization. While I, and others, have frequently taken screen captures of the Current Crime Statistics page, both others and I have normally taken only a restricted image, because by the time they get tweeted out or put in a website article, the entire page gets reduced to a size too small for people to read or appreciate the numbers; an example would be this image I posted previously.

I open the Current Crime Statistics page almost every morning, and yes, I’m gratified to see that homicides are down this year, on a daily basis, to 2021 and 2022, though they are ahead of 2020, the last year the city was under 500 homicides, though 499 isn’t under by very much, and we have noted, several times, the change in the Philadelphia Police Department’s statistics, down from the 502 homicides initially reported for 2020, down to 499, one short of the then-all-time record of 500, set during the crack cocaine wars of 1990, under the ‘leadership’ of then-Mayor Wilson Goode, he of MOVE bombing fame. I made a totally rookie mistake, and failed to get a screen capture of that, but a Twitter fellow styling himself NDJinPhilly was apparently smarter than me that particular time, took the screen shot, and then tweeted it to me.

But I noticed, just this morning, something that I’ve completely cut off from most of my screen captures, the statement, “Annual percentage change compared to same day in 2021.” Uhhh, it’s now 2023, almost a third of a way into the year, and no one has changed it to “Annual percentage change compared to same day in 2022”? 2021 being the record, 562 murders, I wanted to do the math, and yes, the annual percentage change, obviously done byy the computer, is from the previous year, 2022, and not 2021.

That might seem to be a little thing, but it indicates a sloppiness in the Philadelphia Police Department.

Then there’s this:

That’s difficult to read, but you can click on it to enlarge it to full size. What it states is pretty simple:

The homicide statistics represent the daily count (statistics reflect the accurate count during normal business hours, Monday through Friday) and year-to-date total for victims of homicide and are subject to reclassification according to the rules and regulations of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) guidelines. The homicide statistics for years 2007 – 2018 have been submitted to the FBI as the final UCR numbers for the City of Philadelphia.

Is the Department really telling us that the last year in which they have submitted the final Uniform Crime Reports to the FBI was 2018, five years ago? The Current Crime Statistics page tells us that the last annual homicide report available is the one for 2016, though the weekly reports are available through last year.

These errors are easy things to fix; a high school kid could fix the Current Crime Statistics page — it’s very obviously a standard format, which need only to be fixed once a year — but somehow, some way, the Philadelphia Police Department have not done so yet.

The clearance rate on homicides in Philly was a pathetic 42% in 2020, the Commissioner’s first year. The clearance rate was just 36.7% for fatal shootings.[1]This report was produced by the city’s Controller, Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff, on January 15, 2022. Mrs McDuff is now running for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, so some will … Continue reading

2022’s homicide clearance rate was up to almost 47%, but that is still below the national clearance rate.

In major organizations, sloppiness in the little things both leads to, and reflects, sloppiness in the big things. Yesterday’s story about homicide detectives missing appointments and not returning phone calls had the commander of the Homicide unit, Inspector Ernest Ransom, blaming in part the “crushing workload” on the failures, but if they are sloppy on the little things, how can we expect that they won’t be sloppy on bigger stuff? Inspector Ransom, who got that job just a couple of months ago, has a lot of work ahead of him, and certainly deserves some time to get things straight. But getting the little things straightened out is a good way to start getting the bigger problems fixed.
_______________________________
Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well reasoned conservative commentary.

References

References
↑1 This report was produced by the city’s Controller, Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff, on January 15, 2022. Mrs McDuff is now running for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, so some will suspect political motives behind her report.
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Danielle Outlaw and the Peter Principle

The First Street Journal has, including this article, 28 articles tagged #Danielle Outlaw, the Police Commissioner of foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia. A site search for Danielle Outlaw returns 13 pages of articles mentioning her. We have mentioned that, under her leadership, the Philadelphia Police Department is in complete disarray, and, concerning her future as Commissioner, she’s not just toast, but toast which has fallen on the floor, buttered side down.

In some ways, it’s not her fault. She was hired by Mayor Jim Kenney, chosen for her reputation for trying to hire more women and minorities and that “she has been trying to change the perception of policing nationwide.” Things like being an actually good chief of police? Not so much. She was essentially Peter Principled, promoted to the level of her incompetence.

And now there’s this, from The Philadelphia Inquirer:

When homicide victims’ families can’t get ahold of police, some investigate the cases themselves

In Philly, homicide detectives can be difficult to reach, causing families anguish and leading someone to take matters into their own hands.

by Ellie Rushing and Jessica Griffin | Wednesday, April 26, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Kathi Camp called the Philadelphia Police Department’s homicide unit almost every day for four months before the detective assigned to investigate her son’s murder finally called her back.

Camp was desperate to know whether police were any closer to locating Marcus Whitehead, the man wanted for killing her 26-year-old son, Diniar, in August. She felt as if her persistence had paid off when the detective said he would visit her South Philadelphia home with an update.

So on that Monday in February, Camp stayed home from work. She moved all calls and appointments, and waited for him.

But the detective never showed. Camp hasn’t heard from anyone in the unit since, she said, and her calls continue to go unreturned.

There’s a lot more at the original, telling readers whose responsibility it is to communicate with victims’ families, and how meetings and phone calls are promised, but rarely fulfilled. It’s not a new problem, as columnist Helen Ubiñas noted in October of 2018, before Miss Outlaw arrived in the City of Brotherly Love, but it is one that the Commissioner has failed to address.

The clearance rate on homicides in Philly was a pathetic 42% in 2020, the Commissioner’s first year. The clearance rate was just 36.7% for fatal shootings.[1]This report was produced by the city’s Controller, Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff, on January 15, 2022. Mrs McDuff is now running for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, so some will … Continue reading

2022’s homicide clearance rate was up to almost 47%, but that is still below the national clearance rate.

Staff Inspector Ernest Ransom, commanding officer of the Homicide Unit, acknowledged that many families haven’t gotten the communication they deserve. He said he is working to finally address it, and is in the early stages of setting communication standards for detectives and their supervisors.

In just his first few months in this role, Ransom said he received numerous emails from families complaining about the issue, and realized “this has to stop.” A concrete procedure will ensure greater accountability, he said.

It’s a “work in progress,” he said, and although families’ frustrations may never be fully resolved, “if we can minimize it, that’s a start.”

But he also said that amid the ongoing homicide crisis, detectives are shouldering a crushing workload that often leaves them little time to speak with families, and that loved ones often don’t understand how much work is being done behind the scenes on their case.

Chart from The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 5, 2023.

Inspector Ransom took command of the Homicide unit just a couple of months ago, and he’s now in charge of addressing the problem, but the Commissioner has been in her position since February of 2020; why is this just now being addressed? If the detectives are too busy, and have a “crushing workload,” couldn’t the Department hire a couple of civilians to handle something as simple as calling and updating victims’ families?

Philadelphia has a very high homicide rate, and is short several hundred officers; the Commissioner hasn’t done a very good job in retaining existing personnel or attracting new recruits. However, there are some real misuses of officers in jobs which could be handled by civilians[2]The referenced source citation, another Inquirer article dated October 4, 2022, is restricted to subscribers only.:

Nearly 900 positions within the Philadelphia Police Department that are currently held by sworn police officers could be filled by civilians, according to researchers at the University of Pennsylvania who last year studied the department’s makeup.

The review, which the city authorized in 2020, found that these officers perform duties that in other cities are done by civilians, who typically earn less, have no arrest power, and don’t carry firearms.

Researchers found that hundreds of sworn officers primarily work at front desks, perform data entry, or issue permits. Dozens are court liaisons, office managers, or human-resources officials. Six transport mail between police districts. Eight manage graphic design work, and a handful are grant writers.

In total, about 11% of Philadelphia’s 7,000-employee department are civilians, the researchers found. That’s fewer than in most large departments — civilians make up nearly a quarter of total staff among agencies nationwide that serve jurisdictions with more than 1 million people.

If the Philadelphia Police Department are using police officers in jobs which could be handled by civilians, is that not the Commissioner’s responsibility to address? As the former Chief of Police in Portland, Oregon, didn’t Miss Outlaw see some jobs which were held by civilians there which are handled by officers in Philly? There were union issues involved in this, but the Commissioner seems to have taken no real action to address the problem until last year.

There will always be headwinds in dealing with an organization as large as the Philadelphia Police Department, and the union environment in a union town only makes things more difficult, but Commissioner Outlaw has proven herself remarkably unable to deal with those issues. Mayor Kenney, in his zeal to be all progressive and inclusive, hired someone for the job who has been unable to handle the job.

References

References
↑1 This report was produced by the city’s Controller, Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff, on January 15, 2022. Mrs McDuff is now running for the Democratic nomination for Mayor of Philadelphia, so some will suspect political motives behind her report.
↑2 The referenced source citation, another Inquirer article dated October 4, 2022, is restricted to subscribers only.
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Even The Philadelphia Inquirer are calling out Helen Gym Flaherty! Serious question: if she wins the Democratic nomination, and as badly as the Editorial Board have trashed her, would they endorse Republican David Oh in November?

I will admit to being stunned, and I’m sure that columnist Will Bunch must be grinding his teeth in anger, but the Editorial Board of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who previously endorsed former Controller Rebecca Rhynhart McDuff for the Democratic nomination for Mayor are calling “progressive” candidate Helen Gym Flaherty to account:

Helen Gym’s plans for Philly are long on ambition, short on specifics | Editorial

Questions about how to fund billions in new spending have apparently irked Gym, but voters deserve answers.

by The Editorial Board | Tuesday, April 25, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

If elected mayor, Helen Gym has an ambitious agenda for Philadelphia. In fact, she said she wants “to change the way people live in this city.”

Gym’s long list of proposals includes guaranteed jobs for people under 30 and spending $10 billion to modernize public school buildings. But as with much of Gym’s campaign, her grandiose ideas are long on rhetoric but short on details.

When she was asked about the cost of the guaranteed jobs program, she said: “I think there are significant dollars that are currently available, but we don’t have a commitment or a plan right now.”

So, Gym’s guaranteed jobs may not be guaranteed.

None of that will matter to the ‘progressives,’ of course. The Working Families Party, which is quite frankly socialist though they don’t use the word, and which supports Mrs Flaherty, upon hearing of far-left, police-hating Brandon Johnson winning the Mayoral race in Chicago, immediately posted the tweet shown on the right, knowing that Mrs Flaherty is just as supportive of the Philadelphia Police Department as Mr Johnson is of Chicago’s.

Her answer also lacked clarity when asked how the perennially underfunded Philadelphia School District — with its $4 billion annual budget — would pay for the $10 billion for building renovations.

She told Inquirer reporter Anna Orso the city could borrow to finance some of the capital costs and steer a higher percentage of property taxes to the School District, leaving less money for other city services. A campaign spokesperson told this board that “much of the funding is not expected to require borrowing.”

So, maybe Gym will borrow the money, or maybe not.

Gym’s spokesperson added the city’s final cost depends on additional state and federal funding. In other words, how to pay for her signature education program is still to be determined.

There’s much, much more at the original, and the Editorial Board are pretty good at calling out the fact that Mrs Flaherty has been just throwing proposals on the wall, to see what will stick, to grab just another few voters into her column, without any flaming idea how to pay for all of it.

Gym should be honest about her big spending agenda before voters go to the polls on May 16. Philadelphia does not have unlimited funds. Under Mayor Jim Kenney, the city’s budget increased 50% to $6 billion with little to show for the spending spree.

The city tried to tax and spend its way to prosperity in the 1970s and ‘80s and nearly went bankrupt. Despite 25 years of fiscal sanity before Kenney was elected, Philadelphia remains one of the most heavily taxed cities in the country. The city’s tax burden continues to contribute to its slow job growth, which, in turn, is linked to its high poverty rate.

Heaven forfend! Has a Republican sneaked into the Inky’s offices and tried to say things that actually make some sense?

Then again, even the #woke inhabiting the Inquirer’s offices have to realize that the money has to come from somewhere, and that despite a series of begging letters to subscribers, the newspaper still had to make some layoffs last January. Reality bites.

The Board continued for several more paragraphs, telling readers how Mrs Flaherty is, to put it more bluntly than they did, more a bomb-thrower than a builder.

Gym is an effective hell-raiser. But Philadelphia needs a mayor who is a troubleshooter, not a troublemaker. Leading and building consensus in a diverse city doesn’t work with a bullhorn. And rule one for any big spending plans is to show your work.

But that’s the problem: so many people are so disgusted with the city, and with law enforcement — to judge by the landslide election victories of George Soros-sponsored, police-hating District Attorney Larry Krasner — that a bomb thrower who makes socialist promises for which there is no reasonable way to pay stands a very good chance of winning the Democratic primary, which means, in the City of Brotherly Love, almost certainly victory in the November general election as well.

It’s a reasonable question to ask: would the Editorial Board endorse Republican David Oh in the general election if Mrs Flaherty wins the Democratic nomination?

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The Philadelphia Inquirer gives us another fluff article about “Lia” Thomas

Leave it to the #woke editors and writers of The Philadelphia Inquirer when, in the wake of the boycott of Bud Light beer and the “leaves of absence” of two of Budweiser’s and Bud Light’s marketing supervisors, they decided to spend 867 words, exclusive of the headlines and byline, telling us how strong and brave and noble former University of Pennsylvania swimmer Will Thomas, a male who claims to be a woman and goes by the name “Lia”, is for beating out real women on the swim team:

Lia Thomas speaks on podcast about trans issues and her (sic) experience at Penn

Thomas spoke candidly to a fellow trans athlete about her (sic) experience swimming for Penn in the 2022 NCAA championships.

by Andrea Canales | Monday, April 24, 2023 | 6:44 PM EDT

Former Penn swimmer Lia Thomas spoke about her (sic) experience as a lightning rod in the topic of trans athletes on a podcast hosted by another trans athlete, Schuyler Bailar, a former swimmer at Harvard.

Regarding when 16 Penn teammates sent a letter to the school written by Nancy Hogshead-Makar that opposed her (sic) participation in championship meets, a former Olympian now campaigning for legislation to limit trans athletes, Thomas said it was hard to feel opposition coming from some teammates who she (sic) thought had her back. She (sic) pointed out the contradiction in the support they were expressing. “They’re like, ‘Oh, we respect Lia as a woman, as a trans woman, or whatever, we respect her (sic) identity; we just don’t think it’s fair.’ I think you can’t really have that sort of half support,” Thomas said on the Dear Schuyler podcast released Monday.

The adverb ‘sic’ indicates accuracy in transcription, despite errors in the original. With five such references using the incorrect pronouns in the first two paragraphs, plus two more in the headline and sub-heading, I’m tired of adding the notification. But readers may simply assume that they belong after each example of using the feminine references to Mr Thomas.

Thomas said that if she were being supported as a trans woman, then her right to compete in sport would count as much as those of any woman athlete. “You can’t sort of break me down as a person into little pieces and you’re like, ‘OK, this is OK, this is OK, that’s not.’ It’s pretending to be supportive on some level but in reality it just sort of falls flat.”

But that’s just it: that he claims to be a “trans woman” does not mean that people will accept him as a real woman. There really are differences between males and females, physical differences which make a difference in physical activities and sports.

As I predicted, by 8:48 PM EDT the Inquirer had closed all comments and deleted the existing ones. Click to enlarge.

Thomas also expressed concern over a trend of legislation around controlling bodily autonomy.“[There are] broader systems of trying to control people and control people’s bodies and exclude anybody who doesn’t fit a certain mold,” Thomas said. “A true feminist is everybody trying to come together to sort of break down these patriarchal ideals of what a woman is and who can be a woman.”

At a certain point in the discourse, it weighed on Thomas that she had become a flashpoint in the debate.

“I definitely struggled with at first, sort of like a year ago following the season, following NCAAs, of feeling almost a responsibility or maybe even a blame for some of the new rulings or rules or legislation,” Thomas said. She realized, however, “It wasn’t me personally that sparked it; it was just [trans-exclusionists] were waiting for a trans woman to be successful to go on a whole tirade against trans people and pass all sorts of legislation. So that’s helped me move past that a little bit.”

Translation: when a male, a mature, adult male, started beating real women. I’ve asked the question before: if someone was setting out to destroy acceptance of transgenderism, what would he be doing differently from what Mr Thomas has done?

Note the pullquote to the left, screen captured from the Inky original, complete with its embedded link; it references Penn swimmer Anna Kalandadze, and how she’s heading for records. We noted Miss Kalandadze previously, and how she finished second to Mr Thomas in the 1650 meter freestyle in the Zippy Invitational Event in Akron, Ohio in December of 2021. On Sunday, December 5, 2021, Mr Thomas, won the 1,650 meter freestyle with a time of 15:59:71; the second-place finisher was Miss Kalandadze, who touched at 16:37:44 in the Zippy Invitational Event in Akron, Ohio. The difference between Mr Thomas’ and Miss Kalandadze’s times is 37.73 seconds.

Now?

Kalandadze, a senior distance swimmer for Penn, won Ivy League titles in the 500-yard freestyle and the 1650 free this past February. Kalandadze’s time of 4 minutes, 38.86 seconds in the 500 free was 13th-best in the nation this year, while her 15:53.88 in the 1650 free was the sixth-fastest. Kalandadze will represent the Quakers in both events at the NCAA championships from March 15-18 in Knoxville, Tenn.

She has significantly improved her time, but she’s still almost six seconds slower than Mr Thomas time, when he was so far ahead of the field that he didn’t really need to push at the end. No one will say it, but it’s obvious that once Mr Thomas won his first NCAA championship, he deliberately backed off, so as to not totally demolish the field, and create even more anger at his unfair presence in the women’s competition. No, I can’t prove that, because he’ll never admit it, but he was so much faster than all of the real women in the Zippy Invitational that it’s extremely difficult to believe that he lost that much of his advantage in the couple of months before the Ivy League and NCAA championships.

No one would care if Will Thomas wanted to identify as “Lia,” and tell everybody that he’s a woman now, if he were not using his male athletic advantages unfairly. If he wants to be seen as a real woman, why is he doing things which so obviously set himself apart from real women?

Naturally, the Inky’s article was, supposedly, a straight sports article, but it was an obvious fluff piece, to support Mr Thomas’ claim that he’s a she now. Sports articles in the Inquirer do allow reader comments, unlike other stories in the newspaper, but once the editors saw what they were getting, they quickly deleted all comments and closed the comments section.  🙂

I knew that would happen, which is why I got the quick screen capture.

The newspaper very much supports transgenderism, using the faked names and imagined pronouns the transgendered want, and, as closing the comments section proves, the editors will brook no dissent. But the Bud Light/Dylan Mulvaney controversy pointed out the obvious: there are a whole lot of people who don’t accept that stupidity.

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Bud Light: the choice is between incompetence and stupidity Alissa Heinerscheid's Career Limiting Move has limited someone else's career as well

We have previously noted how Anheuser-Busch executives have realized that the corporation completely f(ouled) up over using ‘transgender’ parody actor Dylan Mulvaney as a spokesthing for Bud Light, and how Bud Light’s Vice President for Marketing Alissa Heinerscheid has taken a “leave of absence” over the controversy.

Well, Mrs Heinerscheid hasn’t been the only casualty. From The Wall Street Journal:

Bud Light Brewer Puts Two Executives on Leave After Uproar Over Transgender Influencer

Alissa Heinerscheid, who oversaw Bud Light marketing, and her boss Daniel Blake placed on leave

By Ginger Adams Otis, Lauren Weber, and Jennifer Maloney | Updated: Sunday, April 23, 2023 | 4:26 PM EDT

Anheuser-Busch InBev SA BUD: (%) said it had placed on leave two executives who oversaw a Bud Light collaboration with a transgender activist. Continue reading →

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Differences which make a difference

Football 365 sounds like a great site, maybe something akin to Good Morning Football or NFL Total Access on the NFL Network, on Channel 212 on DirecTV. Alas! it’s not about real football, but just soccer.

Still, the site isn’t political, despite being British. At least, I couldn’t find any real politics in this article from the site:

Leah Williamson is latest footballer to fall victim to a sport designed for men

by John Nicholson | Monday, April 24, 2023 | 9:41 AM GMT

We live in a world created by men, largely for men. A world in which male is the default, to the detriment of women. Anyone who doubts this, even though the evidence is all around us, should read Caroline Criado-Perez’s book ‘Invisible Women’, which does a brilliant job of analysing the gender data gap and how it discriminates against women in almost every aspect of everyday life.

And this isn’t just a minor irritation; it leads to dangerous outcomes for women. For example, PPE used in the pandemic was designed to fit male faces, not women’s. And crash test dummies are a standard male size which in turn leads to women being 47% more likely to be injured in a car crash.

OK, maybe it’s a little bit political. That crash dummies might be sized as an average male doesn’t change the impact of the crash. Women generally being smaller and lighter than men means that, in an accident, they have less mass to absorb the same amount of kinetic force. Continue reading →

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Solomon Jones and his very bad timing

Solomon Jones is a columnist for The Phila-delphia Inquirer, and, according to his biography blurb at the bottom of his column, “is the author of ‘Ten Lives Ten Demands: Life and Death Stories and a Black Activistʼs Blueprint for Racial Justice.’ Listen to him weekdays from 7 to 10 a.m. on WURD 900 AM.” Amusingly enough, the amazon.com blurb for his book calls it a “manifesto,” with these demands to “rectify racial injustice.” Copyrighted in 2021, I do wonder if, given the current Democratic candidates for Mayor of Philadelphia, whether he still adheres to his demand to “Defund the police and move funds to trained social workers, mental health professionals, and conflict resolution specialists.” Even Helen Gym Flaherty no longer says that, though I would not be surprised if she didn’t move in that direction if she wins.

Unfortunately for Mr Jones, his latest column is a masterpiece of lousy timing. Continue reading →